The Greatest Story Never Told
by Kathryn Hart
Summary: A Professor's story in it's entirety...A Cutter Tribute


_The Greatest Story Never Told_

_A Professor's Story_

_by Kathryn Hart_

_Happy birthday Douglas Henshall November 19th :)_

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_Hello to those who are reading this. This is a story about Nick Cutter, the people he knew and the life he led. _

_It will make you smile, it may make you cry. But it is inspiring, I promise you.  
_

_You're probably wondering who I am. Well, that doesn't really matter. What does matter is what I'm about to tell you. Nick Cutter changed many people's lives. He was a part of something so incredibly great even he couldn't imagine the possibilities._

_ Okay, let me start at the beginning:_

_ Nicholas Cutter led a pretty average life, grew up in a normal family, graduated with honors. He became a Professor at Central Metropolitan University. Although he was very smart, he tended to put other things before his job, often missing his own lectures. _

_ Nick had a best friend. His name was Stephen Hart. I say 'was' because Stephen sacrificed his life in order to save Cutter's. But I'm getting ahead of myself._

_ Nick met a woman in college named Helen Ambrose, who also shared his love of Paleontology. They got married and shared their research and discoveries in science._

_ Nick's life was good, until the day Helen disappeared. She was gone without a trace. Not even a body was found in the Forest of Dean where she had gone last. Nick regretted arguing with her just before she disappeared. _

_ Eight long years he grieved for her. But he still had his friend Stephen, who became his Lab Assistant and worked with him full time at the college. _

_ Finally, in a pub he met a woman who changed his life. Her name was Claudia Brown._

_ Claudia Brown you say? You've never heard of her? Well, obviously not, as she was erased from time. Then how would I know you ask? I have my sources. But I'm jumping ahead again._

_ That day he met Claudia he also saw things he never could've imagined. Portals to a distant past, dinosaurs in living flesh before his eyes, government facilities supported with more money than he thought possible... _

_ Cutter also met more people that day. Abby Maitland, a Zoo keeper with a love for lizards, Connor Temple, a geek with a talent for technology, and James Lester, a Home Office Government representative._

_ He called these portals 'anomalies'. "Doorways in time to worlds we could barely imagine." to quote him exactly. _

_ Suddenly Nick found himself the leader of a team solely created to secretly protect the people of the world from the anomalies and the creatures that dared to venture through them. _

_ Nick finally believed that he had gotten over Helen. He was able to let the past go. Claudia helped him do that for a bit, until Helen reappeared. First in the forms of ghostly spectures and handkerchiefs with her initials on them. It seems that she had been traveling the anomalies for the eight years she was gone, without even coming once to say 'hello'. Nick was devastated. Helen invited him to travel with her to see all of time, but Nick rejected her, saying he had finally made a life for himself. _

_ Nick realized too late that he had fallen in love with Claudia Brown. Three times they had kissed, the last being the final time they ever saw each other again. Nick went through an anomaly with Helen, despite Claudia's protests, and when he came back, she had disappeared, and no one ever remembered a woman by that name._

_ Other changes happened as well. The Home Office, where the team's operation was based, was now the Anomaly Research Center, or the ARC for short. In Claudia's place was a man named Oliver Leek._

_ How was Nick supposed to grieve for someone who never existed? Especially since a Public Relations woman named Jennifer Lewis appeared at the ARC who looked exactly like Claudia, but with none of her memories._

_ But Jenny was nothing like Claudia. She wore revealing clothes, lots of makeup, and was brash and abrasive. It broke Nick's heart. Every time he called her 'Claudia' she harshly told him off, saying how much she hated that name._

_ But Nick never let that stop him. He kept going, with only the memory of Claudia in his heart. Nothing stopped him, not even the revelation that his closest friend had had an affair with his wife many years before. However his friendship with Stephen was destroyed after that. _

_ Helen disappeared after inviting Stephen to join her. Stephen also had rejected her, but Helen never left him alone. She followed him and turned him against the team. All the while Nick was unaware._

_ Things came to a head when Helen revealed that she also remembered Claudia. But there was more than that. Helen had been working with Leek to create a creature army to take over the Earth. Leek had turned against the ARC. He eventually was killed by his own creations._

_ The greatest loss that day was Stephen Hart. Cutter willingly wanted to give up his life in order to stop the creatures getting out of the building. But Stephen knocked him down with a punch to the face and rushing into the room. Nick yelled and banged against the door separating them, demanding Stephen to open the door. But he didn't. Stephen Hart died a hero. _

_At his funeral Nick stood there, a broken man. He tore up the only picture of Claudia that he had, realizing that it was futile to keep hope in his heart. Later he went back to retrieve the pieces. _

_ Not even Stephen's death stopped him. Jenny changed her appearance into something more suitable for life at the ARC, looking more and more like Claudia every day. But still Nick kept the memory of his beloved in his heart._

_ Nick soon met more people. Captain Becker and Sarah Page. That day Nick finally made the connection from the anomalies to legends in all of time. Connor, at the same time, discovered the effects of electricity on anomalies._

_ Nick realized that anomalies could be predicted, by recording every anomaly that had ever opened. That was what the model was for. A tangible living proof that every anomaly was connected. That was Nick's greatest creation._

_ His team grew to love him and respect him as their leader and father figurehead._

_ But this story can't have a happy ending I'm afraid. Because Helen returned. She accused Cutter of destroying the future and she eventually blew up the ARC. _

_ Nick and the rest stood outside the burning ARC. Nick realized that Helen had not come out. He went back in for her, despite the objections of Jenny, whose reaction was parallel to Claudia's before she disappeared. Jenny had fallen in love with Cutter, but she never got to tell him how she felt._

_ Nick found Helen alright. And his reward? He was shot in cold blood and left to die by his vindictive wife._

_ Connor found him soon after. Cutter left his legacy in the form of the artifact, which he said had something to do with the anomalies. Connor took it upon himself to find out what.  
_

_ Nicholas Cutter took his last breath with Claudia Brown's name on his lips._

_ But the story doesn't end there. What Cutter left was much greater than what anybody else had left. _

_ Jenny found the taped up picture of Claudia, and eventually quit the ARC, planning to continue on with her life. Connor, Abby, Becker and Sarah continued on in Cutter's name, with the help of new leader Danny Quinn, who, although much different than Cutter, still earned the respect of his fellow teammates. But they never forgot the one person who brought them all together in the first place, the man who had made all this possible._

_ I guess you don't want Cutter's story to end there. Well, just let me say, Nick finally found what he was looking for. His true love was waiting for him on the other side. They were finally reunited._

_ And that's the end of this story...for now._

_~Fine~_


End file.
